Illegality is what puts the "cash" value in marijuana as a cash crop. Nicotiana tabacum, in the form of Burley tobacco, used for cigarettes, gets a farmer about $1.75 a pound, after drying.
What is Cannabis sativa going to fetch the farmer when it is just another cash crop? More than tobacco? Certainly at first, but for how long?
Today, somebody used to paying $100 an ounce for "cheap" marijuana, and many times that for hydroponically grown, high THC stuff, might think that a $50.00 an ounce tax, (as proposed in Sacramento) in exchange for legalization, is a great deal. Certainly the knowledge that you won't be arrested, or shot in the head, tryuing to buy dope is worth a lot, and the tax will bring in some money the first few years.
But when the untaxed crop is selling for, let's be crazy and say 10 times as much as tobacco, or $17.50 a pound, how great will a tax of $800 a pound seem then? A tax on retailers under the bill under proposal in Sacramento.
Hmmm. If a guy buys weed from a legal retailer, 97.5% of the dealer's raw material cost is for excise tax. If, on the other hand, the weed buyer buys from a production chain that doesn't pay taxes, well he can pay his non-taxed supplier $408.75 a pound for non-taxed weed, or 23 times the $17.50 a pound the farmer in the tax paid distribution chain gets (which is, remember, 10 times what the tobacco farmer gets), and still pay just half the product cost (much less selling price) of the the legal, taxed retailer.
That doesn't sound like a formula for a vast influx of cash to the State coffers. It sounds like changing the offense for marijuana possession to a revenue crime.
Remember all those movies about moonshiners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? The Federal Excise Tax on distilled liquor was $12.50 a proof gallon, or what, 50-60% of the retail price of rot gut at a licensed, taxed liquor store? This tax is 90%+. Any bets on whether the State of California (again, after a brief burst of revenue) spends more on beefing up its revenue collection efforts than it actually collects at $800 a pound?